Aporia
by Lee Tennant
Summary: An unexpected visitor takes the Doctor bad through his past; his decision to leave Gallifrey and the time war.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

What is this clarion call that calls me to me throughout the dark ages of my long life? This mark of destiny that is forced upon me by those who know me and those who fear me. These songs that sing of me? These strange words that are me and yet have no knowledge of me?

Is this destiny? I have lived too long to believe in destiny. I know that God plays dice with the universe, no matter how many sleepless nights the random meaninglessness of everything gave Albert. I know there is no master plan. There is no order.

There is only me and I am just one man.

That's the problem with being who I am, what I am, what I represent to existence. Your friends want you to stride among the stars like a God because it makes them feel safe, makes them feel special. And your enemies, oh, your enemies need to feel as though it was not their inadequacies but your brilliance that defeated them.

And so they cry out across the void of space and time for the oncoming storm, the destroyer of words, the implacable but lonely God who descends upon your world and changes everything.

But I say, I am. And that is all I am. Not the destruction, not the law, not the basis for your religion. There are more things in the universe than are dreamt of in your philosophy but I, I am not one of them.

The thing about destiny is that it's so comforting. All these things, these seemingly inevitable things, like dominos hit by the big bang at the start of the universe and stretching out toward the silence; if these things are fixed then I have no blame, no shame in all of this. None of us do. We are all just pawns of the universe.

What a load of self-indulgent rubbish.

I am my actions as well as my intentions and I take responsibility for all my decisions, all my mistakes.

And if I were to tell you, if I were to allow myself to remember, if I were to sit down today and tell you it all, every little detail, every small decision of my life, then you would see.

If I were to take you back to the beginning, then you would know. The foibles, the mistakes, the small petty decisions, the juvenile rebellions, the arrogance that brought down my world through a hundred silly little things that add up to a simple, single truth.

I am just a man.

Let me show you who I am. Let me tell you that story. Let me start at the beginning. Let me take you there... to Gallifrey, under a brilliant burnt-orange sky.

Hello, I'm the Doctor. Let me show you who I really am...


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

Can you hear the grinding noise in a vacuum? The wheezing sound of that ancient box as it flies through time and space; a dimension within a dimension. It was a strange thought she pondered as she stood there, pretending as a she always did to fly the TARDIS.

It was, oh, sometime after her and Rory's wedding and the honeymoon and all that strange tradition was out of the way.

"How come River can fly the TARDIS and I can't," she asked him instead. "I mean, you said only Timelords can fly it and you're the only Timelord left. Wait, is River a _Timelord_?"

"River is not a Timelord. I'd know," he'd replied with an emphatic, if somewhat distracted, twist of his lips. He was plotting a elaborate course toward something called the Medusa Cascade and was busy running around the console like a madman.

"And River can't fly the TARDIS, she just _believes_ she can fly the TARDIS and the TARDIS is too polite to tell her otherwise."

"That makes no sense," she'd said flatly. "I think you don't know how it's possible and you're just making things up."

"I had a travelling companion who thought she flew the TARDIS once. Annoying Australian girl. Couldn't get rid of her no matter how I tried. See, she _thought_ she flew the TARDIS but she was actually an unwitting part of an evil Timelord's plan to trap me in a recursive occlusion.

"So, what? You're saying that River is _evil?_"

"It's entirely possible."

"She's nearly died saving your life... at least twice. And that still doesn't explain how she could fly the TARDIS."

"Let's not talk about River, 'ey?" he asked her, somewhat impatiently. "I'm just glad to have some peace from the insane woman for a while."

"Ok," Amy agreed, somewhat chastened. "How about you tell me about Elizabeth 1? What's with the Virgin Queen malarkey?"

The Doctor just gave her an exasperated look and she took a few steps backwards, hands outstretched, to signify that she was backing off.

"Ok, ok, no talking about the women in your life. I get it. You should try marriage though. Honestly. I recommend it."

"Maybe later," he said vaguely and turned back to the controls.

"This just... doesn't make any sense," he said finally.

"What doesn't?" she asked curiously.

"It's saying there's another unstable time distortion nearby; a fluctuation in the time vortex. It's throwing the TARDIS off course but I can't..." He grabbed a nearby mallet and banged the control panel a few times before picking up the tomato ketchup from the console and squirting it onto the display."

"Are you insane?" Amy asked him, incredulously. "Stupid question, I know. You're you. Of course you're insane."

"Alright, what's going on?" said a voice from the nearby stairs. Amy looked up and saw Rory appear and saunter down to the console level. "I'm in the library looking for the swimming pool and all of a sudden these... bells go off."

The Doctor looked up in some surprise.

"What, the cloister bells? Did you say you heard the...

Before he could even finish his sentence, a deep reverberating boom sounded in the console room; a rhythmic, musical tolling that nonetheless communicated that something was very wrong.

"Oh no, the cloister bells," yelled the Doctor. "I don't..."

"Doctor," interjected Rory, trying to be the voice of reason, "just tell us. What's going on?"

The Doctor ran his strong fingers through his brown hair in frustration and then looked up at them both.

"If I didn't know better I'd say there was another TARDIS nearby but it's... it's wrong. The readings are wrong. There's something going very very wrong. The TARDIS is trying to warn me that there's something... just odd... about the time vortex. I've tried to move us out of the way but it's like..." he clapped his hands and pointed at Amy, "it's like the gravity of a black hole. We're being sucked in and there's nothing..."

"I know, reverse the polarity! I used to reverse the polarity all the time. Reverse the polarity of what though. I mean, it has to have polarity for me to be able to reverse it. Maybe this polarity idea was not the best, although... Ah hah!"

The Doctor began frantically moving around the console, flicking switches and buttons until he seemed to be satisfied with whatever he had done Then he turned on the screen and looked in the viewer so Amy and Rory could see what was forming outside.

"There you are," he told them, gesturing to the screen in relief and pride, "all safe now so we can see the show."

"What show?" Amy asked as she sidled over to the viewer. Rory moved in behind her and gently took her hand. He was much more affectionate in public now that they were married. Through the viewer they could see a miasmal haze of violently-coloured... something... coalescing near them in the blackness of open space.

"That," said the Doctor, wondering, "is the aperture of a highly-unstable space-time conduit within the vortex. And in the next few minutes it's probably going to explode."

"Um, explode?" Rory queried him, looking concerned. "We're hung in space looking at something that's going to _explode_. I mean, _explode! _Maybe it's just me, Doctor, but I'd prefer to be far far away from something that's going to, you know, blow up and kill us all."

"Don't worry, Rory, I did the... thingamy with the whatsit and we're completely safe. Well, mostly safe. _Probably_ safe... tell you what, let's back us up a bit just to be safe."

Even as the Doctor's hands moved toward the controls, a sudden explosion rocked the TARDIS and the three of them were thrown across the console room; Amy hitting a column with a thud, Rory landing on top of her and the Doctor hitting the far wall with a disturbing crack.

There was silence in the TARDIS for a while before the three clambered back onto their feet.

"Amy, Rory, are you ok?" the Doctor managed finally, re-adjusting his bow tie and pulling his suspenders back up onto his shoulders. He saw them lying in a sprawled heap on the floor. Amy gave a groan that sounded more like frustration than pain and Rory rolled off her and grunted.

"Now now, you two, get up so I can have a look at you. Yes yes," he said as he dusted both of them off then gave them a quick sonic. "You'll be fine. No harm done. TARDIS is ok too, I think."

He wandered over to the console again as Amy walked over to the viewscreen.

"Yes, all good. Readings all clear. No harm done, old girl. Rory, can you check those readings near the zigzag plotter?"

"Ah, Doctor," Amy ventured, wondering how she could describe what she saw on the screen.

"All readings 5, Doctor," reported Rory.

"Good, Rory, all sounds good."

"Ah, Doctor," Amy tried again, this time waving her hand to command his attention. "I think you need to see this."

"Alright, Amy, what is it. The phenomenon exploded and, being time energy, I doubt there's going to be anything to _see_ out... oh my," he finished as he looked at the viewer.

"What is that?" asked Rory, joining them again.

"It looks like... some sort of machinery, maybe a capsule of some kind?" speculated Amy.

"No," muttered the Doctor, "no, that's...well, that's _impossible_."

"What is it?" Rory and Amy asked.

"Well that," replied the Doctor, "that would be... well, that would be... another TARDIS."

"I thought there weren't any other TARDIS'," noted Amy, "or other Timelords to fly them."

"There weren't," said the Doctor, his hand moving slowly to his temple and tapping gently against the skull protecting his mind.

"There weren't. But now... there are. That is a TARDIS. And in it is a Timelord."

"No way!" exclaimed Amy.

"Way," confirmed the Doctor. "Way indeed."


End file.
